[SIMS] Address validation service status?

[LosOjos]

Does anybody know or have any idea when the address validation service is likely to return? It's been down for what seems like months now (it's at least 4 weeks)

[Sivadam]

Does anybody know or have any idea when the address validation service is likely to return? It's been down for what seems like months now (it's at least 4 weeks)

 

Is that a local issue? It works ok here!

See:- Home address problems again? (27396) on SupportNet

[LosOjos]

Is that a local issue? It works ok here!

See:- Home address problems again? (27396) on SupportNet

 

I thought it was national, our local support said that they are awaiting a patch from Capita...

[jonjo]

Has anyone heard anything? We've had a call with Capita for months and we've got nowhere yet. We have around 10 schools on the blink.

[Mike_Cartwright]

I'm also wondering if this is an ongoing issue. I'm in a school in Hartlepool and we have been without address validation for a couple of weeks. The server and clients seem to be able to connect to the necessary URL but without knowing the protocol, port etc it's difficult to troubleshoot further.

[Sarconia]

It seems to be random, we get schools which report this on and off from time to time. It seems to resolve itself when I re-enter exactly the same settings into the SIMS Services screen and save it again but I've no idea why as they are exactly the same settings as before...

[LosOjos]

Well I was adding a couple of new pupils yesterday and it all seems to be working again now in Sandwell

[Mike_Cartwright]

It seems to resolve itself when I re-enter exactly the same settings into the SIMS Services screen and save it again but I've no idea why as they are exactly the same settings as before...

 

Is that proxy settings etc?

[jonjo]

The issue moves around our schools, even workstations within schools. There are a couple of workstations out there that fail no matter what. We've asked Capita about checking the destination address for issues, maybe over subscribed sql connections or something. Got some weird responses like 'we don't know who owns or maintains that database'. Think I might have got a confused analyst though.

[PhilNeal]

From what people are saying this has to be a local issue. There are odd periods, normally at night, when the service has to be taken down but not working on a few machines is highly unlikely to be the service.

[jonjo]

This only started in May. Never any issues before that. We have instances where two workstations, next to each other, can both connect to the web address validation URL but only one can run the service. The next day both will work. The next day the one that originally worked will fail. We also have secondary schools where they move around to find a workstation that is in a working state. Over the course of a few weeks they have to move back and forth!

 

I can't see how it is local. The situation would be static if that was so. Capita support have said much the same but cannot illustrate how every other internet service works OK but capita web address still fails (on random machines). I'm not letting them close it until they show how that could be so!

[PhilNeal]

Jonjo - I've been checking up on this issue. Affected schools seem to be linked through the Synetrix firewall. They have rolled out a fix to allow HTTP 1.1 (what ever that is) and hopefully that will resolve the issue.

 

More generally we've had a two instances of the service being down for a few hours due to the loss of the IP address.

[Sivadam]

Still not a problem here!

As reported in second post of the thread!

[jonjo]

Jonjo - I've been checking up on this issue. Affected schools seem to be linked through the Synetrix firewall. They have rolled out a fix to allow HTTP 1.1 (what ever that is) and hopefully that will resolve the issue.

 

More generally we've had a two instances of the service being down for a few hours due to the loss of the IP address.

 

This is starting to make sense! Synetrix put a change on their firewall a few weeks ago to allow '5 on demand' traffic. We quickly found that the change broke parent pay and our cashless catering boxes. Synetrix put a permanent fix in this morning to address that which seems to fixed this issue as well (something to do with x-content headers - whatever they are!). We've running through our 16 calls to check all is well, 5 and counting with no issues!

 

Unfortunately Phil, Capita now owns Synetrix so I can say with absolute certainty that it was Capita's fault all along!!

[PhilNeal]

I hate collective responsibility!